


The Poison That Saved Me

by NothingRiddikulus



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Gen, I've tagged as gen but read how you like, Oathbringer spoilers, basically they're cuddly, brief description of abuse in the context of slavery, friends/qps/lovers idm, if shitty lighteyes getting the deaths they deserve is what youre into this is for you, kal and ren's relationship in this is ambigous, sexual assualt mention, teen rating for violence and stuff listed above
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 14:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13683849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingRiddikulus/pseuds/NothingRiddikulus
Summary: Blackbane was a killer, a scholar, a warrior, Radiant, revolutionary, and a devoted tender lover. And no one knew who he was.A killer is on the loose in Urithiru. Not everyone is displeased.





	The Poison That Saved Me

Another Lighteyes was dead. Brightlord Halmar, a stern but unbecoming man of almost seventy had been found face down in Urithiru’s stables, flies treating him much the same as the piles of dung he lay in. A trail of blood lead to his chambers, where he had presumably been killed. Brightness Shallan Kholin had volunteered to take the case.

‘He was clearly killed by a shardblade, Father’, she reported to Dalinar slowly, ‘although he also has several wounds from a regular knife.’

‘The stab wounds on his back I heard about?’

‘Yes. It’s unclear how he managed to survive so long that all the wounds bled. Some were long dried up when the body was found and some still wet. He lost…’ –Shallan was pale with fear— ‘he lost a lot of blood. He also appears to have been hit in the head with some kind of blunt object, although the injuries from that aren’t severe.’ She folded the page of notes she’d made and tucked them away. She had not been reading from it. 

‘A kick to the head then, perhaps?’, suggested Adolin, slipping an arm around his wife’s shoulders. He hadn’t seen the gory body first hand. ‘That would fit with the pattern we’re seeing here. The killer obviously hates their victims, Father.’ 

‘Yes’. Dalinar nodded grimly. ‘Though damnation knows why’.

~

By all accounts, Brightlord Halmar had been a fair and honest man. 

By all Lighteyed accounts that was.

~

Slinking back to the bridgemen’s rooms for dinner, Kaladin struggled to supress a smile. His men were chuckling quietly over stew. 

‘Ah! Extra stew for the captain!’, Rock exclaimed, lowering his ladle deep into the pot. ‘He has had long day of pretending to feel sad about the death of chull dung!’ He laughed from deep in his belly and handed Kaladin his bowl. Kaladin thanked him.

‘You know what that Halmar did?’, Lopen asked of Renarin. He stuck an elbow in Renarin’s ribs and Renarin shoved him back.

‘He was the man who used to beat Natam’s back until he bled’, Renarin replied. His face showed a sombre expression. ‘So frankly good riddance’.

His expression of happiness at the other lighteyes’ death was a much needed signal to his darkeyed friends that they were safe to properly celebrate around him. 

‘A toast!’, Lopen called out. ‘A toast to whoever finally did away with that damned man!’

Kaladin sat down next to Renarin and swapped some of the hunks of chicken from his stew for the lavis left at the bottom of Renarin’s bowl. Renarin stared at him intently for a moment afterwards, and then hurriedly looked away. Bowl on his knees he reached into his pocket for that chain of his and twisted it in his hands. The prince was deep in thought.

~

Standing at the door while Dalinar and the others spoke, Kaladin reflected on what was now the fourteenth murder of someone who had hurt one of his men. The back injuries were too much of a coincidence. He hadn’t heard of Natam being kicked in the head, but it was always possible Halmar had done that to someone else. Being kicked in the head by the lighteyes who owned you wasn’t an uncommon experience for a darkeyed slave. It had happened to Kaladin himself more times than he could count.

The last corpse had belonged to a man who’d abused three separate members of Bridge Four at different times and had suffered accordingly for each crime. It wasn’t always Bridge Four’s abusers either. One of Lopen’s cousins had joined the army after being driven to poverty by his local Citylord, in a case that mirrored Kaladin’s own story jarringly. The Citylord, by the name of Gurdor, had later been found floating in one of Urithiru’s man made streams along with all of his spheres, which had been grabbed at by the hands of far too many darkeyes to ever be retrieved.

Gurdor had been stark naked, the glyph for ‘greed’ carved into the flesh of his stomach. When he was found it was assumed he’d died before the drowning. After hearing about Halmar’s wounds, some crusty and some wet but all bloody, the body bleeding long after it should have given up, Kaladin wasn’t sure.

‘What do you think of all this?’, Dalinar asked him.

‘I think… I think if the killer didn’t use a shardblade then we’d be assuming they were darkeyed. They’re educated, since they know glyphs, but have a grudge against an awful lot of lighteyes. They may have some medical knowledge. Those are a lot of contradictions, Sir, and I’m one of the only people they fit.’

‘But you have an alibi’, Renarin put in. ‘We were in the tavern together at the time of Halmar’s death’.

Kaladin nodded slowly, and several people in the room sighed with obvious relief.

Kaladin had not been in the tavern that day.

~

The called the killer ‘Blackbane’. 

He, (they assumed it was a he), slaughtered with the same wrath that Dalinar had as a young man. Kaladin had only heard stories of the Highking’s youth but he shuddered to think of it the same way the lighteyes shuddered to think of this new killer now.

Unlike the Blackthorn, however, this new killer had subtlety. Rather than rampage through a battlefield leaving a path of bodies and fear in men’s hearts, Blackbane crept into private chambers and made art of cruel men’s deaths. No one saw him and lived.

Blackbane was named for his first attack, the murder of Brightlord Malatar, who’s treatment by Kaladin had cried to his men about only a week previously to his death. Malatar had taken pleasure in humiliating his slaves, calling Kaladin names and having him sleep outside when the nights grew cold. One morning he had found his chambers covered in Blackbane leaves, which reappeared the next day after he’d had them cleaned away. He could not get rid of them. After three days of psychological torture, the killer had gagged him and then nailed him to his wooden window frame with a sword through each shoulder, torso and legs dangling over the side of the tower. His face had been fresh with tears when they found him there in the middle of the night, finally dead. 

~

Kaladin strolled through Urithiru in the moonlight, humming to himself in the carefree way of a man who was finally able to feel safe. All this killing had taken a weight off his shoulders. That evening Peet had decided it was his turn to confide in his friends, and had told Bridge Four of Brightlord Revalem, who had cut off a young slave’s fingers as Peet watched to punish him for stealing food. Which was ironic, Peet told them, face stricken with horror, as Revalem himself found it hard to keep his hands to himself around women. 

Kal had taken a bath with oils that smelled of flowers. His hair was still a little damp, but it was even curlier when it dried in a light breeze and he liked that. He liked being clean. It made him feel like himself. He stretched, yawned, and knocked on the door to Revalem’s chambers. He knew who was going to die tonight, and he had a good idea how.

~

Renarin was already crouched over Revalem when Kaladin entered the room. The Brightlord was gagged and had a few scratches on his shoulder made by Renarin in the process of subduing him. Renarin was panting and red and his hands were in fists, his whole body contorted with hatred and anger and pain.

‘Hello Renarin’, said Kaladin.

Renarin head whipped up, and Revalem fell out of his arms.

~

‘Are you angry?’ Renarin asked, nibbling at some flat bread they’d found in Revalem’s chambers. Revalem was unconscious after falling to the floor and Renarin wanted to wait until he woke up to finish what he had planned. An array of small knives lay neatly on the table behind him.

‘Why would I be?’

‘I don’t know. This uh, this isn’t really a situation I’ve mentally prepared for and normally when that happens it means I’ve done something wrong’.

‘Well I suppose some people would consider murder a little bit wrong. Your spren uh, Glys? He allows it?’

‘I’m a special case spren wise Kal’.

‘Fair. Either way, Ren… I’m not angry. Storms, I’m in awe of you. I could never do this Ren I’m… I…’

‘You shouldn’t have to’, he said softly. ‘You’re not meant for killing in cold blood, Kaladin. That would be the same as more violence done to you I think. Meanwhile I have a lot of repressed anger. And I’ve recently stopped caring about much’. He looked at his hands and shivered. 

‘You’re wonderful Renarin’, Kal breathed. He draped one of Revalem’s blankets over Renarin’s shoulders.

Revalem twitched.

~

The two of them sat at one of Urithiru’s deep windowsills, Kaladin’s head on Renarin’s shoulder.

‘Does it help, Renarin asked him quietly.

Revalem lay dead where they had left him in his chambers, all ten of his severed fingers laying around his head. They had looked almost like painspren. Renarin had chewed on his lip as he watched Revalem squirm, the killing obviously harder now that his initial anger had worn off. His face was not so red, and his hands tucked under his armpits. Things made more sense to Kaladin after that. The thought of Renarin planning murders, killing slowly and happily, was nonsense. Fuelled by hate however, running furious to some unknown lighteyes’ chambers with a hand on his knife after hearing of their atrocities… Yes, that fit.

At Kaladin’s request, Renarin had shown him how he kept his victims living. Carefully, with almost a surgeon’s precision, he had put a slit in Revalem’s stomach. Then he had sucked in stormlight from a bag of spheres at his belt and sent it to the brightlord. Revalem had become livelier instantly. His wound was not properly healed, but the blood was clotted and some of it, Renarin thought, could have been replaced. He wasn’t sure how his powers worked. Finally, Renarin had slit Revalem’s throat, taking a small, sharp knife and gentley drawing it between Revalem’s ears. He’d glanced at Kaladin like an axehound pup after its first hunt, placing a tiny corpse at its master’s feet and quietly desperate for approval. Kal had nodded, and they’d left, hand in hand.

‘I think so.’

‘I would have killed Amaram if you hadn’t’. 

‘Thank you’.

‘Your hair smells nice.’ 

Kaladin let out a soft musical sigh and pushed his head into Renarin’s chest. Renarin instinctively held him tighter, and patted Kaladin’s back awkwardly, humming soothingly into his hair. Ah, Renarin Kholin, a man of just as many contradictions as Kaladin himself, the warrior forced to be gentle, mirror image to Kal the surgeon forced to hurt. Kaladin was good and killing, and this glorious boy was good at comfort, even if he craved to let his anger be known just as strongly as Kaladin craved to fall asleep in a safe bed held in strong arms.

‘Blackbane’, said Kaladin, ‘is just the flipside of Stormblessed’.

‘hmm’. Renarin nodded uncertainly.

‘You kill to protect’.

‘I kill because I _love_. I don’t want anyone I love to feel unsafe ever again Kal’. His face shone with tears. His was a _greedy_ love.

‘Blackbane has saved me before. Sometimes seeing death in your darkest hour can remind you how much you want to live’.

‘If you ever don’t want to live then I’ll kill people until you do’.

~

No lighteyes died for a month.

~

‘I didn’t mean to kill Malatar’, Renarin whispered. He and Kaladin were clasped in a formal embrace, gently sweeping over the dancefloor at an impromptu ball held to celebrate the assumed death of Blackbane. ‘I was just angry, and then I wanted to get inside his head. Pinning him to the window was spur of the moment. And then I realised he might die if I didn’t heal him. And then I decided he deserved to’.

‘It felt so storming good to know someone was on my side’.

‘No one else is. I felt like if I didn’t do something about him no one would. Father’s still hesitant to reprimand high ranking lighteyes, Jasnah doesn’t _care_ … Why doesn’t anyone care Kal?’

‘Because they’re lighteyed’.

‘ _I’m_ lighteyed’.

‘You’re half foreign, you were never given the privileges your brother was, and people talk to you like you’re a child. You barely count’.

‘I suppose not’.

The atmosphere at this supposed celebration was tense. Some brave hero must have secretly done away with the killer, people whispered. But they could never be sure. No body had been found. No one had come forward to collect a reward for Blackbane’s death. Could anyone even have managed to kill him? He was shrouded in mysteries. Kaladin lead Renarin off the dancefloor, and they sat in comfortable silence while the music played, watching the partygoers try and pretend they weren’t scared. Renarin gave Kaladin a brief mischievous smile and Kaladin felt lucky. Blackbane was a killer, a scholar, a warrior, Radiant, revolutionary, and a devoted tender lover. And no one knew who he was.

Tomorrow, Dalinar Kholin would receive a letter, from Blackbane to the Blackthorn. Renarin had written it out, with help from Kaladin, using a strange fabrial found deep within that city that printed characters at the push of a button. They’d had to work around the lack of a more modern alphabet. Many new buttons had needed carving and they’d had to find an inventive way of refilling the fabrial with ink. Nevertheless, the letter was finished. The first line read simply ‘Take their freedom before I take their lives’. The rest was a list of names, and a list of crimes. A simple sketch of a Blackbane leaf, done by Kaladin’s hand, filled the space at the bottom of the page, inked in a venomous dark green.

~

Dalinar Kholin stood at the edge of a balcony, a crowd of all kinds of people at his feet. He seemed angry to Kaladin and yet Renarin, who knew his father better, saw that he was scheming, trapped in a corner and about to make an impressive escape. The Highking smiled with the look of a man learning to enjoy causing chaos.

‘Urithiru’, he stated, ‘is not Alethkar. As such, we should not have to live by Alethi rules that have no place in the modern day. We live in a time where women and darkeyes hold shardblades and men are learning to write. And yet people are unhappy. Lighteyed criminals go unpunished if their victims are darkeyed. That is not right’.

Kaladin squeezed Renarin’s hand. 

‘Value should not be determined by eye colour. And so, your Highking hereby declares, there shall be no caste system in my city of Urithiru’.

The crowd fell into uproar.


End file.
